Industrial automation systems are used to monitor, control and regulate technical processes, particularly in the fields of production, process, and building automation. Such systems enable operation of control devices, sensors, machines and industrial installations, which are intended to be carried out as autonomous as possible and independent of human interventions. Due to the continuously increasing importance of information technology for automation systems that comprise numerous networked control and computer units, methods for reliably providing functions that are distributed over an automation system and are intended to provide monitoring, control and regulation functions are becoming increasingly important.
Interruptions in communication connections between computer units of an industrial automation system or automation devices may result in undesirable or unnecessary repetition of transmission of a service request. This causes additional utilization of communication connections of the industrial automation system, which may result in further system disturbances or faults. In addition, messages that have not been transmitted or have not been fully transmitted may prevent an industrial automation system from changing to or remaining in a safe operating state, for example. This may ultimately result in failure of a complete production installation and a costly production standstill. A particular problem in industrial automation systems regularly results from message traffic having a comparatively large number of messages but relatively short messages, as a result of which the above problems are intensified.
WO 2007/144364 A1 describes a method for networking an automated installation comprising at least one cell with a subnetwork. The subnetwork is connected to a further subnetwork of the automated installation via a router. A multicast group that extends over both subnetworks is provided for networking the automated installation. The multicast group is used, to detect a communication network address of a communication network interface of a subassembly. Here, the subassembly of the multicast group has previously been associated via the communication network address and the communication network interface has previously been connected to the subnetwork. A name is allocated to the communication network interface of the subassembly using the communication network address. A further communication network address of the communication network interface of the subassembly, which has at least one part of a numerical representation of the name, is determined in a further step.
An older European patent application with the application file reference 14166194.2 discloses a method for configuring a communication device inside an industrial automation system, wherein a configuration unit of the communication device transmits a datagram containing a configuration request to a configuration server. The configuration server allocates at least one first topological device name component to the communication device in response to the configuration request, wherein the device name component is associated with a spatial or hierarchical arrangement of the configuration server. Each forwarding distribution unit adds a further topological device name component associated with a spatial or hierarchical arrangement of the respective forwarding distribution unit. The configuration unit of the communication device uses the topological device name components and a unique name component inside its subnetwork to generate its device name.
US 2005 0041671 A1 discloses a communication system having at least one first and one second router, wherein the second router requests at least one IPv6 address prefix from the first router. Here, the first router comprises a storage unit for IPv6 address prefixes, wherein at least one IPv6 address prefix is disclosed in response to the request from the second router. The second router comprises a unit for generating a further IPv6 address prefix based on the IPv6 address prefix disclosed by the first router. The further IPv6 address prefix is used by a communication device connected to the second router to generate an IPv6 address and is disclosed by the second router for this purpose.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,194,661 B2 describes a method for automatically configuring a communication device inside a segmented communication network, wherein a monitoring unit checks whether a received IPv6 data packet comprises a router advertisement or a router solicitation. In the case of a router solicitation, a MAC sender address of the data packet is removed from the IPv6 data packet by the monitoring unit. In addition, the monitoring unit inserts an external MAC address into the IPv6 data packet to forward the latter as a multicast message to a router. In the case of a router advertisement, the monitoring unit removes a MAC router address from the IPv6 data packet and instead inserts an internal MAC address into the IPv6 data packet in order to forward the latter as a unicast message to the communication device to be configured.